


all i want for christmas is you

by foxmagpie



Series: year of firsts [1]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, First Christmas, Light Angst, Post-Divorce, blended families - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:28:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22044862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxmagpie/pseuds/foxmagpie
Summary: Series will cover a year of firsts for Beth and Rio—first Christmas, first New Year's, first Valentine's Day, and so on. Major milestones in Beth & Rio's relationship. Loosely set in time approximately a year into Beth and Rio's relationship. Assume 2x13 never happened.
Relationships: Beth Boland & Marcus, Beth Boland/Rio
Series: year of firsts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1586800
Comments: 46
Kudos: 247





	all i want for christmas is you

**Author's Note:**

> First Christmas together—there's some arguing and some making up :)

Rio presses a kiss to Beth’s sternum, pulls out of her, and then collapses next to her on her bed. Rio’s got one hand on his own chest, the other absentmindedly rubbing circles over Beth’s knuckles. Beth sighs; Rio hums. For a minute, they both just lie there in quiet contentment, catching their breath. 

Beside her, Rio is warm even in the cool room, but Beth feels the air nip at her toes. She gets up to pad across the floor and dig in her top drawer for a pair of wool socks. 

Beth can feel Rio’s eyes on her as she bends over, still naked, to pull the socks on. He makes a noise of appreciation, and Beth looks over her shoulder at him, unimpressed. 

“What?”

“You’d think you’d be used to this by now, is all.”

Rio smirks at her. “Sure, I am.”

“Then why are you always looking at me like that?” Beth asks, pulling her rumpled pajama bottoms back on. 

“‘Cause I like lookin’ at you,” he says easily. 

Beth bites back a smile, shaking her head. She should be used to it by now, too, the way he seems to just say things so openly right after sex. It’s like fucking her sates and subdues him into a more open version of himself. He’s used those minutes after he comes down from an orgasm to start all sorts of conversations—like the time he asked her to meet Marcus’s mother, or the time he admitted he’d been missing her after spending a week in Canada on business trip. 

Still, Beth doesn’t think much of it when he asks, while she’s pulling her pajama top in over her head, “So you got the kids for Christmas, yeah? Since he had ‘em for Thanksgivin’?”

Beth _mhms_ as she disappears into the bathroom to pee. She’d hated being away from the kids for their first big holiday. Last year she and Dean had tried to do the holidays jointly, and what a disaster it had been—but this year hadn’t been much better, at least for the kids. Beth had enjoyed a quiet night with Rio eating Chinese food, but her kids had come back the next day cranky and upset that all their favorite dishes had been absent at the meal, that Dean had gotten the wrong rolls and that Judith had made the mashed potatoes with peas and onions. 

Beth reappears in the door frame with her toothbrush in her mouth and her face cream dabbed onto her forehead and cheeks. She reaches down to pick up Rio’s briefs from the floor and she holds them up, silently asking him if he’d like to put them back on. 

At Rio’s shake of his head, Beth disappears back into the bathroom to toss them in the hamper. Between the distance and the sound of the toothbrush bristles gliding back and forth across her teeth, she barely makes out Rio saying, “I got Marcus this year, too.”

Beth spits, turns on the faucet, and calls back to him, oblivious at his meaning: “Oh, good.”

Although she turns off the light when she comes back into the room, Rio is illuminated on her bed by the bright white snow coating the ground outside the French doors. He’s under the blanket now, his hands linked behind his head as he lies casually on his side of her bed. 

Beth slides under the covers and then reaches for her lotion, drizzling some into her hands and then lathering them up. She’s focused on this when Rio rolls over to face her and asks, “So how you wanna do this?”

“Do what?”

“Christmas.”

Beth jerks her head up, blinks, and then turns to look at him. “Christmas?”

“Yeah. Ain’t you wanna do it together?”

“Together? What about the kids?”

“See, I was kinda includin’ ‘em in the ‘together’ part.”

“Oh.”

“...or nah?” Rio asks, cocking his head and wrinkling his brow. “Separate?”

Beth stares at him blankly. She hadn’t even thought—hadn’t even _considered_ this. She’d thought Thanksgiving was a fluke, that it didn’t really count as spending a holiday together because, well… they hadn’t done anything besides eat takeout and have sex on basically every available surface in the house. 

“You want to do Christmas together?”

“Yeah.” He says it so easily, and she doesn’t understand how he does that. How he just names what he wants like that. “You don’t?” 

“No, I do,” Beth says quickly, and she resumes rubbing the lotion into her skin, but she does it a little too fast, a little too hard. She’s already reorganizing her vision of the holiday in her head, making space for Marcus and Rio at the table, on the hearth with the stockings.

“Yeah?” Rio asks skeptically. 

“Yes,” Beth says more firmly. “I want to. I just… didn’t expect that you would, is all.”

Rio leans over and gently grabs Beth’s chin, turning her head so that she’s looking at him. They’re inches apart, and Beth’s breath hitches like it always does when he looks at her like this. 

“You’d think you’d be used to this by now,” Rio says softly, nearly closing the gap so that his mouth hovers just over hers. 

“I am,” Beth whispers, but it’s a lie. She’s not sure she’ll ever get used to this, to him, to all the ways he wants her. 

It’s the right answer though, because Rio closes his eyes and kisses her.

* * *

“So, you’ll just bring Marcus’s gifts here?” Beth asks the next morning as she steeps Rio’s tea. “And stay the night so we can all open presents together in the morning?”

Rio nods without looking up from the paper. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

“You should bring them over soon, that way I can wrap them.”

“They already wrapped,” Rio says, glancing up at her. “I get ‘em gift wrapped at the shops.”

“No!” Beth protests, shaking her head. “You pay for that?”

“Yeah. I tip ‘em real well, too. When you gonna remember that we print our own money?”

“Still…” Beth says, pushing the mug across the island to Rio. “I’ll rewrap them.”

“Why?”

“That way his presents match everyone else’s—so he doesn’t feel left out.” She starts calculating in her head whether she has enough of the reindeer paper left, or whether she’ll need to buy another roll from Target. 

Rio scoffs. “Mama, that’s a whole lotta work for nothin’. They gonna tear it off in about thirty seconds anyway. Who cares?”

“I do,” Beth insists. Rio rolls his eyes, but shrugs, like he’s saying he won’t stop her. “Does he have a special stocking?”

“He’s got a red one?”

“Like one of those generic ones?” Beth asks, nose scrunching in disdain. 

“His abuela glitter glued his name on it, then put some sequins and shit on there. Most of ‘em have fallen off by this point, though.”

Beth exhales heavily through her nose, then pulls a pen and pad out of the junk drawer. She begins writing, vocalizing, “Knit… stockings… for… Marcus… and… Rio.”

“You gonna knit us stockings?” Rio asks, incredulous. “Both of us?”

“Yes.”

“And rewrap all his presents?”

“Yes.”

“In five days? On top of the other shit I’m sure you got on your to-do list?”

“Yes! I want you guys to have a special stocking and—“

“Lemme guess: they need to _match_.”

Beth juts out her lower lip. “No. Each person has their own unique stocking. You know, with their name and special colors and whatnot. Do you think Marcus will want _Star Wars_ or Pokémon? Actually—what about you? What do you want on your stocking?”

Rio runs a hand over his face, like he just can’t understand her. “Elizabeth. I don’t need a stocking. You doin’ too much.”

Beth waves her hand at him. “It’s fine. I’m a fast knitter—and the presents will only take a few minutes. It’s really not adding that much to my list.”

Rio cocks an eyebrow at her. “Don’t knit me a stocking.”

“Rio.”

“I don’t want one. Hell, I don’t _need_ one.”

“Of course you do.”

“I don’t want nothin’ that comes in a stockin’. All that candy and junk—”

“First of all, you don’t really get a choice. Santa fills the stockings, and the kids will ask questions if you don’t have one. Secondly, Santa leaves them nuts and an orange in their stocking. No candy.”

“Nuts? And an orange?”

“Yes, that’s the way my family’s always done it. Plus, we have all the leftover cookies that we baked for Santa. They don’t need more candy.”

Rio sighs. “You gonna do this whole thing real over-the-top-like, huh?”

“You knew what you were signing up for,” Beth says, swooping down to kiss him on the cheek. “Don’t pretend you didn’t.”

Rio grumbles, but relents, turning the page of the newspaper over to the business section. 

* * *

Beth asks Rio to bring Marcus’s gifts by the day before Christmas Eve. He shows up in the evening, after work, and she’s busy in the kitchen making dinner, so she doesn’t even look up at him unloading the bag onto the kitchen table. 

She doesn’t want to admit it, but she does sort of regret insisting on rewrapping the presents. She shouldn’t be surprised that her errands list has spiraled out of control, magnified by the fact that Annie had come down with a terrible flu and begged Beth to help with some of her own list. She’s also spent a great deal of her time consoling the children and wiping over their worried brows about how Christmas won’t be the same this year, since Dean won’t be around, and how it will “suck just like Thanksgiving did.”

Beth had been worried about telling them about Rio and Marcus joining, but that had actually been one of the easiest parts. They were thrilled. Still, though, they were anxious about all the ways things would be “different.”

She’s tried promising them it will still be great, but she knows she can’t promise everything. Dean won’t be there to watch _A Christmas Story_ with them while she bakes the cookies, he won’t be there to do his ridiculous bit where he pretends to be on the telephone with Santa, and he won’t be there to wear the matching holiday pajama set with the boys—which reminds her, she needs to pick up another set for Marcus, too. She won’t even bother asking Rio if he’ll stoop to wearing a plaid pajama set—she knows the answer.

Stirring the soup on the stove idly, she wonders if she can squeeze in another trip to the store to pick up Marcus’s pajamas before she finishes off his stocking tonight and starts Rio’s. 

Beth sets the soup to a low simmer, and turns around, only for her jaw to drop. Her kitchen table is completely overrun with presents—and not just a base layer. They’re _stacked_ , and Rio is nowhere to be found.

“‘Ey,” she hears him say from the foyer, and then she hears the soft sound of the door falling back into the frame. She turns to see Rio holding yet _another_ stack of presents, arms full. 

“What’s all this?” she asks. 

“Presents,” he says simply. 

“These are all for Marcus?” Beth asks weakly. 

“Mostly, but I got somethin’ for all the kids. You, too.”

“Oh.” 

“You a’ight?” Rio asks, setting the boxes on a chair since there’s no more room on the table. He walks over to her, pushes her bangs out of her face. “What are you stressin’ about now? I told you, you don’t gotta rewrap them.”

Beth straightens her back, suddenly, absurdly defensive. “No, I’m going to.”

Rio shrugs. “Okay. We can do it after dinner.”

Beth nods, and pulls away from Rio’s touch. She pulls down two bowls for the soup, then stands fidgeting at the island. 

Rio keeps scrutinizing her, waiting for her to say what’s really bothering her, but Beth struggles for a way to say the words. 

“Come on, Elizabeth.”

Beth looks up at him, and she’s biting her lip. “Do you… always get him so much?”

Rio glances at the pile. “Most of it is from Santa. You know, his reward for bein’ good and all that.”

“But this is what he’s used to?”

“Sure,” Rio says, eyeing her. “But I’m guessin’... you do it different.”

“Something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read. Four presents. Plus one from Santa. Usually something for all of them—like the swingset or the XBOX.”

“Just four presents each?”

Beth can feel her face growing hot. “I have four kids. It’s practical. What you do is—it’s extravagant.”

Smirking, Rio agrees, saying, “Yeah, that’s ‘cause I ain’t got no problem rememberin’ money ain’t an object.”

“But I mean, does Marcus really play with all those toys? Does he really _need_ all that stuff?” Beth presses.

Rio’s mouth thins into a tight line. “It’s Christmas. It’s one day a year.”

“Still, even for one day—”

“My kid ain’t spoiled,” Rio snaps. "If that's what you're sayin'."

Beth starts to snort, but stops herself, seeing Rio’s eyes flash dangerously. Stepping around the counter to approach Rio, she says softly, “You know I love Marcus.”

Rio’s shoulders relax. “Yeah. I know.”

“I just don’t see how we’re going to be able to align this. Marcus can’t have three times as many presents as my kids...”

“But it ain’t fair to ask Marcus to give up what he’s used to, neither.”

“I know.”

“So... we’ll go shoppin’ tonight and get yours some more.”

Eyes bulging, Beth balks. “But that’s not what my kids are used to, either.”

“You think they gonna complain about more presents?”

“Well, no, but—”

“But what?”

“What if you just kept some stuff at your place? For Marcus to open later?” Beth suggests. She doesn’t want to say it out loud, but she knows that her kids aren’t Marcus. They aren’t as naturally demure and sweet. Give them an inch, and they were likely to take a mile—or two. She doesn’t want to imagine what effect spoiling them might have. 

“Only if you want Marcus askin’ why Santa’s doin’ things different this year, invitin’ comparisons from your kids.”

Beth sighs, frustrated, because she doesn’t want that, either. 

She tries her last, weakest argument: “Dean is going to be upset. This isn’t what we agreed on.”

Rio just grins. “Good. Remind me again how good he is at keepin’ promises?” 

* * *

Shopping goes about as well as Beth expects it to go two nights before Christmas. Many of the shelves are bare, the lines are long, and everyone—customers and employees alike—would rather be anywhere else. 

Embarrassingly, Rio witnesses Beth have an altercation with a woman over the last copy of some coveted XBOX game (and he overhears her concoct a weepy tale that suggests that Kenny might have an illness that keeps him “housebound and terribly lonely” in order to convince the woman to give it up). But Beth is mortified when Rio starts pulling things out of the carts of people who are turned around and distracted, and she’s hissing and chastising him about it until she spies a half-abandoned cart with Star Wars LEGO set that Danny and Marcus would go nuts over, and well... Rio is just annoyingly smug about the whole thing after that. 

They hit four different stores and come home tired and sore and irritable with bags loaded with sneakers, dresses, board games, dolls, and seemingly, everything else under the sun. 

Rio in particular is at his wit’s end—apparently he’s never been out shopping with these kinds of crowds, and he had underestimated the chaos. 

Rio’s patience is further tested when, at nearly eleven pm, Beth still insists on rewrapping Marcus’s gifts in addition to wrapping all of the new presents. 

“Mama, it’s late. Do it tomorrow.”

Beth shakes her head. “No, I want tomorrow to be all about the kids. I want everything ready to go so it’s just—just smooth with no hiccups. They were so upset after Thanksgiving. I just… I just want everything to be perfect for them.”

Beth smooths his hand over Beth’s cheek. “They ain’t coming ‘til after dinner, mama,” he whispers, and he leans forward to press a kiss to her ear. “We got time.”

“I know, but I’ve got to prep the meals and—oh, shit, that reminds me,” Beth says, stepping backward. “After the presents, I need to make the cookie dough so that it can chill in the fridge overnight.”

Rio clicks his tongue against his teeth, annoyed. “What time you plannin’ on sleepin’?”

“Well… I need to stay up late to finish the stockings anyway.” Beth chances a glance at him and sees Rio’s jaw set. 

“You’re kiddin’.”

“Marcus’s is nearly done! I just—”

Rio runs his hands over his face. “You go work on the stockin’s. I’ll start rewrappin’.”

“Are you sure?”

“One condition,” Rio says, holding up a finger. “We finish the rest of the wrappin’ tomorrow mornin’. We gotta get some fuckin’ sleep, darlin’.”

Beth looks closely at Rio and sees the exhaustion on his face. The way his shoulders sag, the way his stubble is a bit longer than usual. He’s had a lot on his plate lately, and not just with her perfect Christmas plans. His sister was in the middle of a difficult pregnancy, his mother had had a spill not too long ago—and work was work, which meant it was as busy and turbulent as usual. 

And still, here he was, offering to do something he thought was absolutely stupid.

“Okay,” Beth agrees, nodding. She presses a kiss to the edge of his mouth, and he sighs into it, letting his hands settle at her hips.

* * *

While Beth sits in the sitting room and knits, she can hear Rio huffing loudly and often as he unwraps and rewraps Marcus’s pile of gifts. He swears occasionally, particularly when he’s rewrapping any awkwardly shaped packages, but the one time Beth had gone in to help—and made one comment about how if he just cut the paper to size—Rio had sniped at her and stomped over to push her out of the room.

Rio finishes just as Beth’s started his stocking—she’s decided on black with a golden eagle. He eyes it as he starts stacking Marcus’s gifts under the tree.

“The ones you want to be from Santa can go in my closet in the bedroom,” Beth directs, and Rio disappears for a few moments to hide the majority of the boxes. 

When he returns, Beth has set his stocking back down into her knitting basket. Rio collapses onto the couch and makes a noise of disgruntlement when he reaches for Beth and she bats his hand away.

“I need to make the dough for the cookies tomorrow.”

“Nuh,” Rio protests. “C’mere.”

“The dough—”

“—can wait for five minutes.” Rio arches a brow at her in challenge. 

Beth sighs and walks back over to him, and Rio reaches for her, pulling her onto his lap. Beth giggles a little, feeling a bit like they’re teenagers. She settles on top of him, and he looks at her with heavily-lidded eyes. It makes her feel warm all over. 

“Thanks for helping,” Beth whispers, because she suddenly feels that she should be quiet. 

“Mhm.” Rio absentmindedly begins playing with the hem of her shirt, running his fingers along the soft skin of her lower back. They sit like that, saying nothing, just watching each other silently. Then Rio runs his hands up her back, pressing her toward him until she places her hands on either side of his neck and tilts her forehead against his. He sucks in a long breath, inhaling her scent, and his eyes flutter closed. 

“I need to make the cookies,” Beth murmurs. 

“Mhm,” Rio agrees, barely audible, kneading his knuckles into her back soothingly. She aches from all the shopping and standing in line she’s done, and it makes her sigh into the crook of his neck. 

“Rio,” she tries reprimanding when his lips find her collarbone, but she doesn’t do anything to move away from him. If anything, she sinks deeper into him, mesmerized. 

“Elizabeth,” he breathes against her skin. 

Rio kisses her for a long time. He runs his hands up and down her body, massaging out her tension. 

They’re both tired, languid, unhurried. They undress each other piece by piece, and in the end, Rio ends up on top of her on the couch. He swipes her hair out of her face before he enters her, and then he fucks her with long, slow, even strokes. It’s perfectly silent, besides their breathing—Rio’s breath hitting hot against the hollow of her neck, Beth sucking in air when Rio hits that spot inside of her over and over in a torturously delicious rhythm.

“Don’t stop,” Beth pleads quietly into Rio’s ear when she can feel her orgasm building with the steadiness of his pace. “Don’t stop—just like that—don’t stop, please don’t stop.”

“Okay, baby,” Rio promises in a murmur against her skin. “I got you.”

Feeling that it’s about to hit her, Beth scratches her nails down Rio’s back, and he lets out a sharp gasp.

“You gonna come for me, Elizabeth?”

“Yeah,” Beth practically whines, feeling the tension pull taught. 

“Yeah? You gonna come for me? Come for me, Elizabeth,” he coaxes gently as Beth nods at him. “I want to feel you come for me.”

Beth moans and her eyes flutter closed because it feels _so good_ that she can hardly stand it—and then Rio’s lips crash onto hers, and she feels herself come apart, the waves of her orgasm washing over her as she feels Rio pulse and finish inside of her.

When Rio pulls out of her, he remains lying on top of Beth, using her breasts as his pillow. She idly scratches lightly up and down his back.

Beth thinks about how she should get up. How she should start the cookies, finish the wrapping, complete the stocking. But she doesn’t. Instead, warm and secure under Rio’s weight, she falls asleep.

* * *

“Wake up, mama,” Rio says softly, nudging Beth’s arm to pull her from her sleep.

“What time is it?” Beth asks groggily, opening her eyes to see only darkness.

“It’s real late. Middle of the night.”

“Oh god,” Beth groans. “We fell asleep?”

“You did,” Rio clarifies. 

“You were awake? How long have I been asleep?”

“A bit. Let’s go to bed.”

“I need to finish your stocking. I need to make the cookies!” Beth protests. She pushes Rio’s hand away—which was reaching for her to help her off the couch. She sits up on her own and rubs at her eyes, yawning. Her eyes adjust to the darkness and she sees that Rio still mostly undressed—although he’s pulled on his briefs. 

“I made the cookies.”

“ _You_ made the cookies?” Beth asks, and she feels like she must still be dreaming, imagining him half-naked, baking for her. It’s like one of her fantasies. When she’s more conscious, she’ll have to return to that image. “You know how to make cookies?”

“I seen you do it about ten thousand times, so, yeah, I think I got the hang of it by now.”

Beth smiles deliriously. “That was nice.”

“Yeah, I know,” Rio grumbles. “Now can we go to sleep?”

“But your stocking—”

“Elizabeth,” Rio snaps. “We got the whole day tomorrow. Put this on and come to bed.”

Rio hands Beth one of her robes and she slides it on but makes no move to stand. “If I do it now we can sleep in,” Beth promises.

“You’ve never slept in a day in your life.”

Scowling, Beth changes tactics. “It’s _your_ fault I fell asleep and didn’t finish.”

“I’m pretty sure you finished,” Rio deadpans.

Beth laughs softly, but she pushes Rio away from her. “You go to sleep. I’ll only be up for another hour or so, and then I’ll join you.”

Rio sighs as Beth resettles from the couch into the chair. He doesn’t go to bed. He just sits on the couch opposite her, still in nothing but a pair of grey briefs.

“What are you doing?”

Rio doesn’t say anything—doesn’t even look at her. He just crosses his arms, tilts his head back into the pillows, and yawns. 

“Are you waiting up with me?”

Rio glances at her, begrudgingly confirming her suspicions. 

“Rio,” Beth sighs, setting down the knitting and needles in her lap. “You don’t have to do that. You’re tired. Go to bed.”

“You’re tired,” Rio retorts. “And you don’t have to do everythin’ alone.”

He says it icily, annoyed. Beth opens her mouth to argue back, but finds that she doesn’t have the energy—and she suspects she’ll lose anyway. She reaches her hand into the basket next to her and tosses a throw blanket over at Rio. 

“So you’re not cold,” she sniffs, as if she’s still annoyed at him when she’s actually anything but. 

Grunting in acknowledgment, Rio spreads the blanket over his lap. They sit together silently, Beth knitting, Rio thinking, until at some point Rio’s head falls forward and Beth realizes he’s fallen asleep. 

Glancing at her lap, Beth sees she still has a lot left to do—more than she’d thought. She yawns, and knows Rio was right. She should have left it for the morning. She drops the knitting back into the basket and stretches. 

She considers waking Rio up, dragging him to bed. But she’s so cozy where she is, she just curls her legs up underneath herself and falls asleep. 

* * *

What wakes Beth next isn’t the dulcet sound of Rio’s voice, but the noise of her four children spilling into the foyer, babbling and bickering back and forth with each other. 

Beth and Rio both startle awake, jumping up, as the last person—Dean—enters the house, carrying all of the kids’ backpacks. 

“What time is it?” Beth asks in a panic, thinking she’s slept the entire day away. 

“Eleven,” Dean says judgmentally, realizing they’ve just woken up. He drops the bags on the floor with a _thud._ “I called, like, ten times.”

“My phone’s not on me.”

“Clearly,” Dean says, eyeing her flimsy robe and Rio’s bare chest, half-hidden from the blanket that he has wrapped around his shoulders. 

“Did you sleep on the couch?” Emma asks curiously, studying her mother’s messy hair and Rio’s lack of clothing. 

It’s not that the kids have never seen him in various states of undress—they’ve shown up in the middle of the night enough times to know what he looks like without a shirt—but the bareness of his legs is new. 

“No,” Beth lies, clenching her robe around her tighter. “We were just sitting here talking about what we are all going to do today.”

Dean scoffs, shaking his head. 

Jane glances up at her father, recognizing the beginning sounds of an argument. She darts forward to escape it, but before she rounds the corner to disappear up the stairs, she gasps. “PRESENTS!”

Beth looks into the dining room and sees all of Kenny, Danny, Emma, and Jane’s new toys—perfectly displayed and unwrapped, since Rio has convinced her to leave them for the morning. 

“Get upstairs!” Beth commands. “All of you. Go. No looking!”

The kids begin to scatter upstairs, but of course they try and peek, of course their heads appear over their shoulders as they glance behind themselves. 

When the last set of feet disappears out of sight, Beth sighs, feeling her eye twitch. “Dean, you can't just—”

“What’s all this?” Dean asks, gesturing to the expansion of presents under the tree. He steps into the sitting room and looks over at the dining table. He puts his hands on his hips and he gets louder the second time he asks it. “Beth? What is this?”

Rio’s jaw sets and he looks over to Beth, waiting for her to take the lead. 

“Look, I was going to tell you but—”

Laughing bitterly, Dean looks up at the ceiling and rubs his cheeks in exasperation. “But clearly you’ve been really busy.” He eyes Beth’s hand still clutching at the robe. 

“Actually, I have—”

“Oh, come on—”

“Speaking of ‘busy,’’ Rio interjects. “What you got goin’ on? Why you droppin’ the kids off, what is it? Seven hours early?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, is that a problem?” Dean asks sarcastically. 

“Nah,” Rio says, shrugging. “We always happy to take ‘em.”

Dean’s face turns red and blotchy as he sputters on a retort. He decides to ignore Rio entirely and turns back to Beth. “Beth, you can't just go around changing things without telling m—”

“Says the person reorganizing the entirety of the day’s plans,” Beth mutters. “What happened to spending Christmas Eve with your children?”

Dean’s opens his mouth and then closes it, realizing that the fight is over. “Jeanette… got me tickets to the Pistons game. For Christmas.”

“Oh my god.” Beth pinches the bridge of her nose. “Seriously? You’re abandoning your kids for a _basketball_ game with your _girlfriend?_ ”

“Look, Jeanette spent a lot of money on the tickets and the flight and—”

“The _flight_?”

“Well, the game is in Cincinnati,” Dean says sheepishly. 

Rio lets out a low, harsh laugh. “So you not pickin’ ‘em up tomorrow for Zoo Lights, neither, huh?”

Glaring at Rio, Dean tries to justify his actions: “The kids want to be here, anyway. They’ve been yapping for days about how I do everything wrong and how—”

“Just go,” Beth interrupts. “I don’t want to hear it. Just leave.”

“Beth, come on—”

Beth waves her hand in the air dismissively as she walks away from Dean, ignoring him entirely. “Merry Christmas, Dean. Goodbye.”

Beth goes through the dining room to get to the kitchen, and she pauses, her heart sinking. She has no idea _what_ the kids saw, which means she has no idea what she’s going to put under the tree from _her_ and what to put under the tree from _Santa._

God, if this is the year that she messes everything up and ruins their belief in magic—

Beth hears the front door slam closed and she suddenly feels full to the brim with anger. Dean had no right—and god, did he even _knock_ before he used the key and just barged into her house?

She needs to get these gifts out of sight. Half-mad with rage, Beth starts grabbing as many of the items from the dining table as she can, loading up her arms with toys and shoe boxes and video games and trinkets until the stack is precarious. As soon as she turns to start walking toward her bedroom, the topmost item—who knows what it is, Beth can barely see, there’s so much stuff in her arms—falls to the ground with a _clatter._ She ignores it, powering forward, but then another thing drops.

From the sitting room, Rio comes to her aid, reaching to take some of the boxes off the top of her pile so that she can be a bit more balanced, but all of the sudden, Beth is inexplicably furious with him. 

If he didn’t spoil Marcus like he does, then she wouldn’t be this exhausted from a spectacularly expensive shopping trip. And if he didn’t convince her to leave the presents unwrapped for today, the kids might not have seen anything. And if he didn’t seduce her, she might have been awake enough to finish his stocking, and then she wouldn’t have fallen asleep on the couch, and her children wouldn’t have seen them half-naked on the couch, and—

“I’ve got it,” Beth snaps, discouraging Rio from helping anymore. 

“Don’t really look like you do,” Rio replies roughly, instantly agitated with her attitude. “Kinda looks like you about to lose it.” 

Rio reaches once more for one of the boxes spilling out of her grip, but Beth huffs in frustration and sharply turns away from him. Of course, what happens next is that several of the items shift out of balance, and suddenly there’s a loud clatter as half of the items in her stack spill to the floor with a loud crash.

Beth hears doors open and the kids clamber onto the stairs landing. “What was that?!” Kenny calls. 

“Stay up there!” Beth yells back, voice nearly breaking. “Don’t come down!”

“Mama, you gotta relax,” Rio reminds her, half-gentle, half-authoritative. “Dean bringin’ ‘em over early—it is what it is. It’s gonna be—”

“ _That’s_ what you think I’m mad about?” Beth sneers. 

Rio’s brows instantly knit into a hard line. He presses his fingertips to his chest. “Oh, you mad at _me?”_

“I’m not in the mood to fight with you about this.” Beth begins to head for the bedroom with a now-embarrassingly small pile of things to wrap. 

Behind her, Rio scoffs, then follows. “I’m sorry, _what_ are we fightin’ about? You gonna clue me in, or—?”

Beth opens her arms and lets everything fall onto the bed with a bounce. “If you don’t know, then I don’t have time to explain it all to you. I need to wrap these.”

Before she can turn to go and grab another stack, Rio grabs her arm. “Can you please stop actin’ crazy and just fuckin’ talk to me?”

Eyes flashing, Beth hisses, “Don’t call me that.”

“I will when you stop actin’ like the world’s fallin’ apart because—shit, I dunno, your dumbass ex dropped your kids off early and they saw us half-naked?”

“God, you are so _obtuse!_ You really think this is all Dean’s fault."

“Oh, right. You mad at _me_. Was it ‘cause I stood in line with you for four fuckin’ hours helpin’ you pick out your kids’ Christmas presents? Or ‘cause I rewrapped all _my_ kid’s gifts ‘cause you needed it to be the same goddamn wrappin’ paper? Or how about when I made the cookies you were trippin’ over? Or—no—wait—‘cause I told you _not_ to stress yourself out and _not_ to knit me a stockin’ at three in the goddamn mornin’?”

“Well, that’s certainly one way to reframe everything to make yourself look perfect,” Beth clucks.

“Shit, Elizabeth.” Rio exhales, completely exasperated. 

“I need to finish wrapping the presents,” Beth reiterates icily.

“Fine. I’m gonna shower and pick up Marcus. Told his mom I’d be there no later than one.”

Beth nods tightly. “Fine.”

They stare at each other for a moment, neither quite willing to budge. Then Rio sighs, shrugs and turns on his heel, disappearing into the en suite. 

* * *

“Elizabeth!” Marcus runs to her and beams with his gap-toothed smile as soon as he sees her in the kitchen from the foyer. He tackles her legs into a hug and Beth softens, reaching down to ruffle her hands through his hair. She glances up and sees Rio trailing behind, Marcus’s overnight bag slung over his shoulder. 

“Hey, bud.”

“Are you making cookies?” Marcus asks, putting his hands on the counter and using that leverage to stand on his tiptoes and try to peek into Beth’s mixing bowl.

“Mhm,” Beth says, not chancing a look over at Rio. “Sugar cookies. For Santa Claus.”

Rio hangs Marcus’s bag off the back of one of the island chairs. “So Santa ain’t like chocolate chip or…?” 

A plate of two dozen misshapen chocolate chip cookies sits in the middle of the island, taunting the both of them. Marcus looks between his dad and Beth, trying to decipher the tension in the room.

“The kids are making gingerbread houses upstairs,” Beth suggests to Marcus. “If you want to help.”

“Yeah!”

Once Marcus is safely out of earshot, Beth tries to explain. “I always make sugar cookies.” Rio just stares at her. Feeling a little guilty, now that time and reflection have dulled her anger, Beth says, “We’ll eat your chocolate chip ones tonight—during the movie.”

“Ah,” Rio says. Beth waits, expecting him to say more, but he doesn’t.

“I really appreciate—” Beth starts.

“Yeah,” Rio says, cutting her off. “I’m sure you do.”

“Rio—” 

“I’m gonna help the kids with the gingerbread houses.”

“Rio,” Beth tries again, softer. 

He looks at her, but his jaw is tight, and he’s clearly not ready to forgive her.

“Um. Have fun,” she says awkwardly. 

Rio nods. “Yeah. You too.”

* * *

The rest of the day is tense between them. They don’t outwardly snipe—definitely not in front of the kids—but their groove is off, and they never seem to be on the same footing. 

During dinner, Beth is over-attentive to the kids, never speaking directly to Rio, anxious that he might rebuff her in some way—or, worse, that he might be perfectly cordial for the kids when all he wants to do is fight with her.

She feels nervous and guilty, and just wants to apologize but—but she always has a hard time with that. 

And despite the fact that she knows that Rio is right about a lot of the points he’s laid out, she does still feel frustrated by _her_ points. Only she’d never bothered to tell them to him, and bringing them up now feels like it’s too late, and god, how did everything else fall into place only for her to fuck this part of it up? 

After dinner, they all go to open their one Christmas Eve gift—the matching pajamas. The girls have white PJs with snowflakes on them that match Beth’s own set, and the boys all have red flannel.

“Did you get a pair?” Marcus asks his dad, holding his own set up against his body to see that it will fit.

Beth looks over at Rio, mouth agape. Suddenly she’s ashamed that she never asked him, never even considered that it could make Rio—or Marcus, by extension—feel that Rio was left out.

“Your daddy doesn’t wear pajamas,” Emma declares. “He only sleeps in his underwear.”

“Oh,” Marcus says. Then he nods, like he remembers. “That makes sense.”

Rio smirks a little, and Beth lets out a sigh of relief.

* * *

Before bed, Beth puts on _A Christmas Story,_ and the kids and Rio gather around the television. Jane and Marcus burrow in on either side of Rio, so Beth perches on the edge of the couch for a few minutes before she leaves to make them some hot cocoa and bring over Rio’s plate of cookies. 

“They’re really good,” Beth whispers to Rio since she already snuck one in while she was in the kitchen.

“Thanks,” he says, voice somewhat clipped but not entirely unkind. “Your recipe.”

“Well… you did a good job.”

“Stop talking,” Emma commands. “You have to be quiet during movies.”

“Okay,” Beth whispers, but she’s still looking at Rio, and he’s still looking at her. It’s a fragile moment, like they’re tender but not yet healed. 

“This is my favorite part!” Danny says, tapping Rio’s knee. “You have to watch!”

When everyone’s attention is focused back on the movie, Beth disappears to the kitchen and pulls out her chilled sugar cookie dough. She rolls it out on the counter and uses the cookie cutters to make candy canes and reindeers and snowmen, then shoves a tray of all the shapes into the oven.

Rio appears at the island just as the timer goes off and Beth pulls the fresh cookies out to place them on the cooling racks. 

“What are you doin’ in here alone?” he asks softly.

Beth gestures to the cookies. “Have to finish the decorating.”

“Mmm.” He sounds a bit judgmental, or sad, or something else Beth can’t quite discern—but Beth doesn’t mind. She’s used to this. She’s always decorated the cookies alone, either in the morning while the kids were making gingerbread houses with Dean, or at night when they were watching the film with him.

Beth stares at the cookies, thinking about saying this to Rio—that she’s just used to doing things by herself, that she still needs some time to adjust to really, _truly_ having a partner, that she knows he doesn’t care about this stuff but _she_ does, and god, just everything, she wants to tell him everything—

But she looks up, and Rio is gone.

Beth just nods to herself because yeah, that checks out—after yelling at him and insulting him and disregarding his gestures and then leaving him out from her traditions, why _would_ he be ready to hear her out? 

But then he’s back, and all the kids are with him, and all he says is, “Tell us what to do, mama. We’re here to help decorate.”

* * *

“Thank you,” Beth says when she and Rio finally crawl into bed after the kids are down and the stockings are stuffed and the spectacularly ugly Christmas cookies are each bitten into by the both of them (but so what if they’re ugly, Beth thinks, because the kids had fun, and _she_ had fun, and she even thinks that maybe Rio had fun, too). “And I’m... sorry.”

Rio reaches out to her, and he runs his finger along her face from her forehead to her chin. “It’s a’ight.”

“No, it’s not—it’s just... I wanted everything to be perfect. And I was so nervous that the kids wouldn’t like it without Dean here, and I just wanted to—I don’t know—make them forget that everything is different without him. They _hated_ Thanksgiving, and I just… if they hated Christmas, with me? I don’t know what I would do.” Beth still feels the weight of the day on her shoulders, and she squeezes her eyes shut, trying to stop herself from crying. 

Rio’s quiet for a moment. “Darlin’... I think you’re forgettin’ that the only reason they were upset at Thanksgivin’ is because _you_ the one responsible for everythin’ they love about these holidays. I mean, I’m sure they miss their dad but… you know... I think it’s harder on ‘em, bein’ without you.”

Beth opens her mouth to say something, but she’s rendered speechless. Eventually, all she can come up with is a moan and a “God. I don’t know how you put up with me these last few days.”

“Are you kiddin’? I got to see you go full-on batshit crazy, spinnin’ that tale about Kenny’s fake disease just so you could get ‘im the latest Call of Duty game. I got to see your dumbass ex realize I fucked you so good on the couch that you fell asleep half-naked right there. And I got to fight with you? You know I love a good fight, mama. Always leads to a real good make-up.”

Only Rio could reframe the story like this—to make it sound wonderful instead of awful. Beth giggles softly, and Rio inches closer to her to pull her in for a kiss. 

Beth pulls away after a minute to say, “I really was crazy about all of it—you were right.”

Rio laughs. “Mama, you been fuckin’ crazy from the start. Why you think I love you?”

Realizing what he’s just said, both Rio and Beth freeze. 

“What?” Beth squeaks out. 

After what feels like a long stretch of silence, Rio is suddenly serious. “I think you heard me.”

“But… that’s... the first time you’ve said that. We don’t… we don’t say that.”

“Yeah, I figured it was ‘cause we didn’t have to,” Rio says quietly. “I do, though.”

And then Beth crawls over to Rio, and she gets on top of him, and she kisses him so deeply that they’re both breathless by the end of it. 

“I love you, too,” she whispers.

And then she takes off her Christmas pajamas.

* * *

Shoving Rio awake in the middle of the night, Beth groans, “I never finished your stocking!”

“Yeah, I’m aware,” Rio says, rubbing at his arm. “Jesus, you can really pack a punch.”

“Sorry—I just—what are we going to do?”

“Thought you noticed that I bought one when we was at Target.”

“What? No. You did?” she asks a little sadly. “But—”

“Darlin’,” he says, putting a finger to her lips. “There’s always next year.”

And okay, Beth thinks. Maybe he’s right. 

* * *

Drinking coffee that Rio woke up early to prepare for her and watching her kids tearing open presents, screaming with excitement over slime kits and Easy Bake Ovens and spirographs—Beth thinks it doesn’t get much better than this.

That is until Jane excitedly pulls a present from under the tree and says, “This one’s for mommy!”

Bouncing over to Beth, Jane delivers the present with a _plop_ into her lap. Beth reads her name— _Elizabeth_ —in Rio’s messy scrawl.

“What is it?” Beth asks, shaking the long, somewhat thin package. “Is it… a book?”

“No!” Emma yells.

“You’re gonna love it, mom,” Kenny says. 

“I am?” Beth asks, playing it up. “And how do you know that?”

“Because we were all a part of it!” Danny explains. “Open it!”

Beth glances at Rio from across the room. He’s got Emma in his lap and Marcus between his legs. The kids are looking at her eagerly, and Rio’s looking at her with the same cool, calm expression he always does—waiting patiently to gauge her reaction. 

Carefully tearing the paper off, Beth notices at first that it’s a picture frame. She flips it over, and inside, there’s a professional-looking photograph of Kenny, Danny, Emma, Jane—and Marcus. They’re all dressed to match—the girls in yellow floral, the boys in blue button-ups—and they’re all posed in some sort of field with autumn leaves all around them. 

Beth blinks, realizing tears are brimming in her eyes. “I love it,” she says, looking up and making eye contact with Rio. “When did you—?”

“Couple of months ago,” Rio answers casually. “Think I told you I was takin’ ‘em for tennis at the club.”

A smile plays at Beth’s lips. She’d thought that the Christmas thing was spur-of-the-moment, or prompted from their Thanksgiving together. But now she realizes that his idea of them being a family—Rio’s had that for a long time now. 

“Thank you,” Beth says, wiping a tear away.

“Why is mommy crying?” Beth hears Emma whisper a little too loudly in Rio’s ear.

“Because I’m happy,” Beth says. “I just love… all of you. So much. And I love this photo.”

“There’s more,” Rio says. “In an album. They did a whole day shoot. But this one was my favorite.”

Beth stares at the photo for a second more. She doesn’t have a lot of photos like this that she particularly likes displaying now. She has individual photos, some with pairs of her kids—but most of her photos with all the kids have her and Dean in them, too, and those just don’t feel right to have hanging up anymore. Plus, the addition of Marcus feels right. All of her kids, together.

“We should take a picture,” Beth says.

“Right now?” Kenny asks, groaning. “But I want to play—”

“Nope. Family picture time. Right now. Gather up!”

In all their matching pajamas (and Rio’s joggers and black t-shirt), they gather up on the couch to take a photo with the self-timer. Marcus fights to be between Beth and Rio, while Jane fights to be on Rio’s lap and Emma insists on being tucked in under Beth’s arm. Kenny asks if he can stand behind the couch, and Beth allows it, and Danny settles with his legs criss-crossed on the floor right in front of Marcus.

The flash goes off, and Beth grabs her phone back from its perch on the mantel. She looks at the photo to see seven bright and beaming smiles—and she thinks, this might just be her best Christmas yet.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried (and failed spectacularly) at getting this finished before Christmas, but oh well!


End file.
